“Coma” is a documentary about 4 different individuals who suffered comas and have been admitted to an intensive rehabilitation facility after awakening. The individuals in the facility were periodically evaluated by Dr. Joe Giacino, to determine if they were in a minimally conscious or vegetative state. Tom was a 32 year old who fell from a balcony. He had trouble with what they thought was understanding of language, but it turns out he had central and peripheral hearing loss as a result of the brain injury. He became frustrated easily due to his inability to speak, initially. However, once the doctors figured out it was not his ability to understand language that was impaired, just his hearing, they began writing things down and Tom was able
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Too often, therapists and other medical professionals get caught up in things like documenting progress to please insurance, fulfilling financial or business requirements set by the facility, and/or treating a patient a certain way based on their condition and their experience with “those type of patients” in the past. This documentary really focused on the emotional trauma these individuals and their families experience and how the brain injury consumed their whole lives. As a future PT, I think I will always remember this documentary when meeting with a patient and their family members. I believe it is important to be optimistic about the affected individual having a full recovery, but I also want everyone involved to be realistic in order to prevent false hope. It was apparent that Sean’s family had far greater expectations for him than he could handle. Something Dr. Caroline McCagg said, which really resonated with me, was that once a patient made progress their loved ones always wanted more. If they had been working so hard to be able to sit up and reached that goal, then they would want him/her to stand, and once they could stand they would want him/her to be able to walk with a walker, and then with just a cane, and so on, and so forth. It just really drove the notion that we are to be advocates for our patients and not …show more content…
Cognitive deficits that occur with TBIs can include disorientation, poor attention span, loss of memory, poor organization & reasoning skills, inability to control emotional responses, affected ability to learn, confabulation, and affected functional independence. Motor deficits can include abnormal postures, generalized weakness, difficulty initiating movements, disorders of muscle tone, reemergence of primitive & tonic reflexes, motor sequencing deficits, ataxia, incoordination, and decreased balance. Sensory deficits can include loss of smell, perceptions of cutaneous sensations impaired or absent, visual deficits, perceptual deficits, and proprioceptive deficits. Communication deficits can include decreased awareness of the environment and abnormal tone or posturing that affects ability to initiate conversation. Behavioral deficits can include social disabling, change in personality and temperament, neuroses, psychoses, sexual disinhibition, apathy, irritability, lability, aggression, and low frustration tolerance. As we saw in the documentary, each of the individuals portrayed some of these
Too often, therapists and other medical professionals get caught up in things like documenting progress to please insurance, fulfilling financial or business requirements set by the facility, and/or treating a patient a certain way based on their condition and their experience with “those type of patients” in the past. This documentary really focused on the emotional trauma these individuals and their families experience and how the brain injury consumed their whole lives. As a future PT, I think I will always remember this documentary when meeting with a patient and their family members. I believe it is important to be optimistic about the affected individual having a full recovery, but I also want everyone involved to be realistic in order to prevent false hope. It was apparent that Sean’s family had far greater expectations for him than he could handle. Something Dr. Caroline McCagg said, which really resonated with me, was that once a patient made progress their loved ones always wanted more. If they had been working so hard to be able to sit up and reached that goal, then they would want him/her to stand, and once they could stand they would want him/her to be able to walk with a walker, and then with just a cane, and so on, and so forth. It just really drove the notion that we are to be advocates for our patients and not …show more content…
Cognitive deficits that occur with TBIs can include disorientation, poor attention span, loss of memory, poor organization & reasoning skills, inability to control emotional responses, affected ability to learn, confabulation, and affected functional independence. Motor deficits can include abnormal postures, generalized weakness, difficulty initiating movements, disorders of muscle tone, reemergence of primitive & tonic reflexes, motor sequencing deficits, ataxia, incoordination, and decreased balance. Sensory deficits can include loss of smell, perceptions of cutaneous sensations impaired or absent, visual deficits, perceptual deficits, and proprioceptive deficits. Communication deficits can include decreased awareness of the environment and abnormal tone or posturing that affects ability to initiate conversation. Behavioral deficits can include social disabling, change in personality and temperament, neuroses, psychoses, sexual disinhibition, apathy, irritability, lability, aggression, and low frustration tolerance. As we saw in the documentary, each of the individuals portrayed some of these